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Medicine7 Sep 2015

Quit-smoking drug not linked to heart disease or depression

A highly effective drug that helps smokers to quit does not increase their risk of heart attack and depression as was previously thought, research suggests. Researchers who carried out the study say doctors can prescribe varenicline - also known as Champix™ or ChantixTM - more widely to help people stop smoking. Varenicline is the most effective medication to help smokers quit but previous reports have suggested that users may be more likely to suffer a heart attack. The drug has also been linked to depression, self-harm and suicide. This latest research ...

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Medicine6 Sep 2015

Higher risk of death for patients admitted to NHS hospitals at the weekend

Fewer patients are admitted at weekends, but are more likely to be sicker and have a higher risk of death from Friday through until Monday Authors caution against using the data to estimate avoidable deaths, but call for more research into how services can be improved to reduce risk Patients admitted to hospital at the weekend are more likely to be sicker and have a higher risk of death, compared with those admitted during the week, finds an analysis published in The BMJ this week. The analysis was carried out as a collaboration between University Hospital Birmingham ...

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Medicine4 Sep 2015

Supervised tooth brushing and fluoride varnish schemes benefit kids and the health economy

Action to prevent tooth decay in children, such as supervised tooth brushing and fluoride varnish schemes, are not just beneficial to children's oral health but could also result in cost savings to the NHS of hundreds of pounds per child, so says a leading dental health researcher. Professor Elizabeth Kay, Foundation Dean of the Peninsula Dental School from Plymouth University Peninsula Schools of Medicine and Dentistry, has carried out the first economic evaluation of public health measures to reduce tooth decay in children at high risk, in association with the National ...

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Engineering4 Sep 2015

New nanomaterial maintains conductivity in three dimensions

An international team of scientists has developed what may be the first one-step process for making seamless carbon-based nanomaterials that possess superior thermal, electrical and mechanical properties in three dimensions. The research holds potential for increased energy storage in high efficiency batteries and supercapacitors, increasing the efficiency of energy conversion in solar cells, for lightweight thermal coatings and more. The study is published today (Sept. 4) in the online journal Science Advances. In early testing, a three-dimensional (3D) fiber-like ...

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Medicine4 Sep 2015

Decontamination exterminates antibiotic-resistant bacteria from pig farm

Washington, DC - September 4, 2015 - Decontamination protocols eradicated both methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and antibiotic resistant, pathogenic intestinal bacteria, the Enterobacteriaceae, from a pig farm. The research appears online September 4th in ASM's journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology. The study involved a farm on which both pathogens had been discovered through routine monitoring. The farmer had approached the investigators for help. The Enterobacteriaceae were expressing resistance genes called extended-spectrum β-lactamases ...

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Medicine4 Sep 2015

Common antidepressant may change brain

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. - Sept. 4, 2015 - A commonly prescribed antidepressant may alter brain structures in depressed and non-depressed individuals in very different ways, according to new research at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. The study - conducted in nonhuman primates with brain structures and functions similar to those of humans - found that the antidepressant sertraline, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) marketed as Zoloft, significantly increased the volume of one brain region in depressed subjects but decreased the volume of two brain areas in ...

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Environment4 Sep 2015

Climate change could leave Pacific Northwest amphibians high and dry

Far above the wildfires raging in Washington's forests, a less noticeable consequence of this dry year is taking place in mountain ponds. The minimal snowpack and long summer drought that have left the Pacific Northwest lowlands parched also affect the region's amphibians due to loss of mountain pond habitat. According to a new paper published Sept. 2 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, this summer's severe conditions may be the new normal within just a few decades. "This year is an analog for the 2070s in terms of the conditions of the ponds in response to climate," ...

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Medicine4 Sep 2015

Highly effective seasickness treatment on the horizon

The misery of motion sickness could be ended within five to ten years thanks to a new treatment being developed by scientists. The cause of motion sickness is still a mystery but a popular theory among scientists says it is to do with confusing messages received by our brains from both our ears and eyes, when we are moving. It is a very common complaint and has the potential to affect all of us, meaning we get a bit queasy on boats or rollercoasters. However, around three in ten people experience hard-to-bear motion sickness symptoms, such as dizziness, severe nausea, ...

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Medicine4 Sep 2015

Spasm at site of atherosclerotic coronary artery narrowing increases risk of heart attack

This news release is available in Japanese. Researchers at Kumamoto University in Japan have found that patients with coronary spasm have a higher risk of experiencing future heart attack particularly when a spasm occurs at the site of atherosclerotic coronary artery narrowing, i.e., coronary atherosclerotic stenosis. Angina is caused by the narrowing of the blood vessels that carry blood to the heart, and vasospastic angina patients account for about 40% of all angina patients. The incidence and progression of the disease can be reduced through appropriate drug treatment ...

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Environment4 Sep 2015

GVSU professor, student help discover one-million-year-old monkey fossil

ALLENDALE, Mich. -- An international team of scientists, including a Grand Valley State University professor and alumni, recently discovered a species of monkey fossil the team has dated to be more than one million years old. The discovery was made after the team recovered a fossil tibia (shin bone) belonging to the species of extinct monkey Antillothrix bernensis from an underwater cave in Altagracia Province, Dominican Republic. The species was roughly the size of a small cat, dwelled in trees, and lived largely on a diet of fruits and leaves. "We know that there ...

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Science4 Sep 2015

Polar bears may survive ice melt, with or without seals

As climate change accelerates ice melt in the Arctic, polar bears may find caribou and snow geese replacing seals as an important food source, shows a recent study published in the journal PLOS ONE. The research, by Linda Gormezano and Robert Rockwell at the American Museum of Natural History, is based on new computations incorporating caloric energy from terrestrial food sources and indicates that the bears' extended stays on land may not be as grim as previously suggested. "Polar bears are opportunists and have been documented consuming various types and combinations ...

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Science4 Sep 2015

Bring on the night, say National Park visitors in new study

Natural wonders like tumbling waterfalls, jutting rock faces and banks of wildflowers have long drawn visitors to America's national parks and inspired efforts to protect their beauty. According to a study published Sept. 4 in Park Science, visitors also value and seek to protect a different kind of threatened natural resource in the parks: dark nighttime skies. Almost 90 percent of visitors to Maine's Acadia National Park interviewed for the study agreed or strongly agreed with the statements, "Viewing the night sky is important to me" and "The National Park Service ...

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Medicine4 Sep 2015

Researchers show effectiveness of non-surgical treatment of lumbar spinal stenosis

(Boston)--Patients with spinal stenosis (SS) experienced good short term benefit, lasting from weeks to months, after receiving epidural steroid injections (ESI). These findings, which appear in a letter in the journal Pain Medicine, contradict a previously published New England Journal Medicine (NEJM) study that found epidural steroid injections were not helpful in spinal stenosis cases. It has been one year since the publication of "A Randomized Trial of Epidural Glucocorticoid Steroid Injections for Spinal Stenosis." This was a large scale clinical trial evaluating ...

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Environment4 Sep 2015

The million year old monkey: New evidence confirms the antiquity of fossil primate

An international team of scientists have dated a species of fossil monkey found across the Caribbean to just over 1 million years old. The discovery was made after the researchers recovered a fossil tibia (shin bone) belonging to the species of extinct monkey Antillothrix bernensis from an underwater cave in Altagracia Province, Dominican Republic. The fossil was embedded in a limestone rock that was dated using the Uranium-series technique. In a paper published this week in the well renowned international journal, the Journal of Human Evolution, the team use three-dimensional ...

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Space4 Sep 2015

NASA sees Tropical Storm Kevin stream high clouds over Baja California

Tropical Storm Kevin's center was several hundred miles south-southwest of Baja California when NASA's Aqua satellite passed overhead and saw some associated high clouds streaming over the peninsula. The MODIS and the AIRS instruments aboard Aqua captured visible and infrared images of Kevin on September 3 at 20:50 UTC (4:50 p.m. EDT). The visible image from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument provided look at Kevin's clouds. MODIS showed a somewhat elongated tropical storm with a fragmented band of thunderstorms wrapping into the low-level ...

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Science4 Sep 2015

Scientists unlock the secrets of a heat-loving microbe

Scientists studying how a heat-loving microbe transfers its DNA from one generation to the next say it could further our understanding of an extraordinary superbug. Sulfolobus is part of the Archaea kingdom - a single-cell organism similar to bacteria - which was isolated in hot springs on the island of Hokkaido, Japan. Some Archaea live ordinary lives in mundane environments such as lakes, seas and insect and mammal intestinal tracts, while others live extraordinary lives pushed to extremes in incredibly harsh habitats such as deep sea hydrothermal vents, volcanic ...

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Technology4 Sep 2015

Computer graphics: Less computing time for sand

"Objects of granular media, such as a sandcastle, consist of millions or billions of grains. The computation time needed to produce photorealistic images amounts to hundreds to thousands of processor hours," Professor Carsten Dachsbacher of the Institute for Visualization and Data Analysis of KIT explains. Materials, such as sand, salt or sugar, consist of randomly oriented grains that are visible at a closer look only. Image synthesis, the so-called rendering, is very difficult, as the paths of millions of light rays through the grains have to be simulated. "In addition, ...

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Science4 Sep 2015

Real competitors enhance thrill of auctions

Nowadays, internet auctions play an important role in online trading. No matter whether you want to buy a hedge trimmer or an antique pocket watch - unlike purchases by a click at a fixed price, online auctions provide the atmosphere of a competition for the auction object. Whoever perceives the competition of real contenders, e.g. by avatars or photos on the screen, wishes to stay in the race - and increases his bid. This is a result of a KIT study with more than 450 test persons. Online auctions combine shopping with entertainment, fun, and excitement. This is the ...

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Medicine4 Sep 2015

Supervised tooth brushing and floride varnish schemes benefit kids and the health economy

Action to prevent tooth decay in children, such as supervised tooth brushing and fluoride varnish schemes, are not just beneficial to children's oral health but could also result in cost savings to the NHS of hundreds of pounds per child, so says a leading dental health researcher. Professor Elizabeth Kay, Foundation Dean of the Peninsula Dental School from Plymouth University Peninsula Schools of Medicine and Dentistry, has carried out the first economic evaluation of public health measures to reduce tooth decay in children at high risk, in association with the National ...

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Technology4 Sep 2015

Vestibular organ -- signal replicas make a flexible sensor

When a jogger sets out on his evening run, the active movements of his arms and legs are accompanied by involuntary changes in the position of the head relative to the rest of the body. Yet the jogger does not experience feelings of dizziness like those induced in the passive riders of a rollercoaster, who have no control over the abrupt dips and swoops to which they are exposed. The reason for the difference lies in the vestibular organ (VO) located in the inner ear, which controls balance and posture. The VO senses ongoing self-motion and ensures that, while running, ...

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Medicine4 Sep 2015

Esophageal cancer: Positron emission tomography does not improve treatment

Patients with cancer of the esophagus--also known as the gullet--are often given chemo- or radiotherapy, with the aim of shrinking the tumor before it is surgically removed. Increasingly positron emission tomography (PET) is being used to monitor the size of the tumor during the treatment. To date, however, no benefit for patients has ensued, as Milly Schröer-Günther and co-authors show in an original article in the current issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2015; 112: 545-52). PET is an imaging technique that makes a tumor in ...

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Medicine4 Sep 2015

Community ecology can advance the fight against infectious diseases

Despite continued medical advances, infectious diseases kill over 10 million people worldwide each year. The ecological complexity of many emerging disease threats--interactions among multiple hosts, multiple vectors and even multiple parasites--often complicates efforts aimed at controlling disease. Now, a new paper co-authored by a University of Colorado Boulder professor is advancing a multidisciplinary framework that could provide a better mechanistic understanding of emerging outbreaks. In a study published today in the journal Science, researchers demonstrate how ...

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Environment4 Sep 2015

Fourth wheat gene is key to flowering and climate adaptation

In the game of wheat genetics, Jorge Dubcovsky's laboratory at UC Davis has hit a grand slam, unveiling for the fourth time in a dozen years a gene that governs wheat vernalization, the biological process requiring cold temperatures to trigger flower formation. Identification of the newly characterized VRN-D4 gene and its three counterpart genes is crucial for understanding the vernalization process and developing improved varieties of wheat, which provides about one-fifth of the calories and proteins that we humans consume globally. The new study, reported online in ...

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Medicine4 Sep 2015

Girls and boys with autism differ in behavior, brain structure

Girls with autism display less repetitive and restricted behavior than boys do, according to a study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The study also found that brain differences between boys and girls with autism help explain this discrepancy. The study, which will be published online Sept. 3 in Molecular Autism, gives the best evidence to date that boys and girls exhibit the developmental disorder differently. "We wanted to know which specific clinical manifestations of autism show significant gender differences, and whether patterns ...

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Science4 Sep 2015

Extra hour of screen time per day associated with poorer GCSE grades

Each extra hour per day spent watching TV, using the internet or playing computer games during Year 10 is associated with poorer grades at GCSE at age 16, according to research from the University of Cambridge. In a study published today in the open access International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, researchers also found that pupils doing an extra hour of daily homework and reading performed significantly better than their peers. However, the level of physical activity had no effect on academic performance. The link between physical activity ...

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